Student-led learning?

I have just been reading a very interesting blog by Sarah Findlater, Assistant Principal at a London school. I found her blog from a link after reading The Lazy Teacher’s Handbook (see my earlier blog post about this great book!)

Findlater debates the value of student-led learning- and I was very pleased to see she noted her next challenge was to start employing ‘Digital leaders’ at her school!! Teaching in a traditional, independent girls’ school, it is always a battle splitting my lessons between the old-fashioned rote teaching that parents expect, and the creative, wild, hands-on learning that I love to provide.

Findlater sums this up perfectly in this paragraph of her blog, which I therefore thought I’d share with you:

‘I suppose the key question we need to ask ourselves is – what do we want our students to be when they leave us? What do we want our legacy to be? Some may say that the choice we need to make is simple. Option one – educated, independent, resilient, passionate, resourceful and curious beings. Option two – educated vessels full of facts with little clue what to do with them, bar regurgitate them in an exam. Perhaps it is not as simple as all that but we do need to consider what we are creating and if we are happy with it. Our challenge is to hold tight to our moral purpose when we teach in times of constant change.’ (Findlater, 2013).

Food for thought, surely!